A Shade of Difference

by Allen Drury

  “We are disappointed,” said the delegate of Ghana. “We are not surprised.”

  “I should hardly think it would be well received in Africa,” the French Ambassador said, “but that is the President’s problem.”

  “It might perhaps have been better to do as His Highness desired,” said the Ambassador of the Argentine, “but we would not wish to enter into a matter that is between the United States and the African states.”

  “It is typical Yankee imperialism!” said the delegate of Cuba.

  “I am puzzled by his decision,” the Indian Ambassador observed cautiously to CBS, “but I would wish to study it further before saying anything about it.”

  “A bit thick, under the circumstances, wasn’t it?” asked the Canadian delegate cheerfully.

  “As Africans,” said the delegate of Mali to the Daily Mail, who nodded vigorous agreement, “we are personally affronted. I think we can promise you there will be the gravest consequences.”

  “Oh, no,” said the British Ambassador with a bland expression that didn’t quite come off, “I wouldn’t want to make any comment at all.”

  “Oh, no!” said the M’Bulu of Mbuele with a sunny smile. “I wouldn’t want to make any comment at all!”

  “It’s my fault,” the Secretary of State said. “I should have tried to reach you earlier, but I just assumed you were having your press conference at the usual time.”

  “And of course I just assumed that everything was in order up there,” the President said with a trace of annoyance in his tone. The Secretary glanced across First Avenue at the green and silver shaft of the Secretariat Building, caught now by the slanting golden rays of the late-afternoon sun, and laughed rather grimly.

  “Nothing is ever in order up here. Particularly with everybody in Africa big as life and twice as self-important. I don’t think that reference to ‘little character’ was especially fortunate.”

  “It wasn’t. But I knew how I meant it, and the press knew how I meant it.”

  “—but the world didn’t,” Orrin said. “Or, anyway, a good portion of the world is pretending it didn’t to suit its own devious purposes.”

  “Why are they such chintzy souls all the time?” the President asked in mild wonderment. “They know perfectly well—”

  “It’s like Alice in Wonderland. They do it ’cause it teases. For no other reason at all, except to embarrass us. That’s the great game in the world, you see. We’re out front, so we’re fair target. That’s for the jealous and spiteful ones. For those who really want to tear us down, of course, the game is less frivolous and lighthearted.”

  “Do you know where the line is that separates the two?” the President inquired dryly. The Secretary snorted.

  “It’s a little difficult to find, in some areas. I do think it would be wise to modify your plans somewhat. I ran into Raoul Barre just before I came across the street and he said he has already found great consternation and excitement among the former French colonies. Apparently they still come running to him with their troubles up here, and he thinks you would be well advised to think of some graceful excuse and change your plans.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” the President said in a tone of disgust. “How can I? Do you mean I have to be at the beck and call of every little two-bit international scalawag who wants to hold a gun at my head? It’s blackmail.”

  “Sure,” Orrin Knox said cheerfully, “that’s exactly what it is. And everybody knows it. The most delightfully cynical double life goes on up here all the time about almost everything. Of a political nature, anyway.”

  “Now, Orrin,” the President said. “God knows I don’t have much side to me, but I do have some concept of the dignity of my office, and I can’t let it appear that Terence Ajkaje is leading it around on a string. It’s beneath the office. It’s beneath the United States.”

  “That,” said the Secretary of State, “is exactly the point Raoul was making, in an indirect way. He’s not so sure it is.”

  “Have we fallen that low?” the President demanded. “I don’t believe it. And neither do you.”

  “No. But—”

  “And, furthermore, I must say all this hardly sounds like you. What’s become of the fearless fighting Senator from Illinois? I thought I was appointing a Secretary of State with some starch in his soul.”

  “Now, Harley,” the Secretary said sharply, “you know that isn’t fair.”

  “Well,” the President conceded, “you’re right; it isn’t. I apologize. But it does seem to me—”

  “God knows I’d like to tell the little worm to go to hell,” Orrin said, “but, you see, he isn’t a little worm in the eyes of his fellow Africans, the press, and the New York cocktail circuit. Or if he is, they’re doing an awfully good job of keeping it quiet. He floats around this place on a wave of favorable publicity that hasn’t been matched since Castro spoke to the newspaper editors. He’s the world symbol of freedom and liberty at the moment. It doesn’t make any difference that he’s really the exact opposite. It’s the public image that counts, and I must say the public image is crowned with laurel and ten feet high.”

  “Even so,” the President said with a stubborn note that his Cabinet had come to recognize, “I am afraid I can’t possibly change my plans for him.”

  “Raoul suggested that perhaps you could say that last-minute legislation needed your attention, so you had decided to put off the fishing trip until next week—”

  “There isn’t anything that can’t wait to be signed until I get back.”

  “—and then you could arrange to have possibly just a small buffet at the White House,” Orrin went on calmly, “with perhaps the members of Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs committees and a few of the top correspondents so he can get the publicity he wants—”

  “I said I’m not changing my plans. Now, what else is on your mind?”

  “I feel as Raoul does,” the Secretary said earnestly, “that perhaps under the circumstances it would be best to find a good excuse and do it. The world doesn’t deal in realities any more, you know; it deals in public fictions.”

  “I know. And I am determined that the public fiction about the United States will be that it does not yield to every little passing wind of hysteria that blows. Haven’t I made that clear already, at Geneva and elsewhere?”

  “You have done beautifully,” the Secretary of State said soberly, “and, like you, I think the public fiction will coincide most closely with reality if that is the picture of us you can educate the world to accept. But there is a genuine feeling up here that we must take into account. And in that context—”

  “I know what it is,” the President said. “It’s a feeling of blown-up ego that has the whole world out of balance. Sometimes I think the end result of the United Nations has been to give unimportant little states nobody would ever have heard of a chance to inflate themselves out of all proportion to their actual weight in things. It’s ridiculous that we let the tail swing the cat the way we do.”

  “But you understand why it is,” Orrin Knox suggested. The President sighed.

  “Yes, I understand why it is. The more real power you have, the less you can afford to exercise it, and the less real power you have, the more you can throw it around. It’s a sign of how topsy-turvy our world is.”

  “So you do think perhaps, then, that you can—” the Secretary began, and was conscious at once of a change of atmosphere at the other end of the line.

  “No, indeed,” the President said crisply. “This is one of those times I feel it won’t do to give in.”

  “I’d rather do it gracefully now than find we had to later,” Orrin observed.

  “I can’t conceive of any situation in which we’d ‘have to later.’ Anyway, Ted Jason and his little luncheon in Charleston ought to give him all the headlines he wants.”

  “LeGage Shelby won’t be happy, either,” the Secretary told him with an ironic amusement.

  “LeGage Shelby is the
least of my worries. Are you coming back down tonight?”

  “Yes, I think so. I don’t feel I can be away from the department more than a couple of days without a lot of things getting out from under me. Not that they don’t when I’m there, of course; but I feel better about it when I’m on the spot. At least I can prevent some of it.”

  “Now, surely,” the President said with a mocking irony that exactly mimicked some other voices of the past, “you don’t think that some obscure little clerk in some obscure little bureau lost China, do you?”

  “Obscure little clerks in obscure little bureaus can do a hell of a lot of damage in a government like this, and it’s either naive or disingenuous to say they can’t. However, it’s more a matter of good administration that I’m concerned with. So, I’ll be back in town late tonight if you want to reach me before you go to Michigan.”

  “I’m going to Michigan at six. Do you and Beth like trout?”

  “Love ’em.”

  “I’ll bring you a dozen. And, of course, you can always reach me through the White House switchboard if you need me.”

  “Sure thing,” Orrin Knox said. “Have a good rest. You deserve it.”

  “Thanks,” said the President. “I will.”

  And that, the Secretary thought as he returned the direct phone to the White House to its receiver and swung back to the pile of papers that confronted him on his desk, was what could still happen with Harley. For the most part he had settled into the Presidency with a sure skill that had, in the case of Geneva, risen to an instinctive brilliance. But there was still a stubborn streak, certainly not decreased by the adulation that had followed his actions in the Swiss city, and a certain willful blindness about things, on occasion.

  Of course Orrin could see his position that the United States must not be “on a string to Terence Ajkaje,” but, by the same token, the President’s press conference remark and his decision not to entertain the M’Bulu was already an issue and rapidly becoming more so at the UN. The episode was exactly the sort of thing that the neutralist states, encouraged by the Communists, loved to fret about and worry away at until it had grown to a size out of all proportion to its real worth. And in this recurring and oft-repeated process, of course, the lure of a good story and a major controversy always brought the eager co-operation of the news corps. It was already top news in the New York Post and the New York World-Telegram and Sun, whose late-afternoon editions were on the desk before him. “PRESIDENT SNUBS AFRICANS,” said the former. “HASSLE DEVELOPS ON WHITE HOUSE BID TO TERRY,” said the latter.

  As far as he was concerned, the Secretary thought with some annoyance, he would love to kick the bucket over the moon along with Harley and not worry about it anymore. He smiled as he recalled the President’s remark about his own newly found diplomacy: he certainly had become a diplomat since leaving the Senate. But in the democratic system each job had its own imperatives, as each had its own prerogatives and privileges, and you inevitably found yourself adapting to the style of new responsibilities when you took them on. It was all very well to rise and denounce something in the Senate—and he thought for a wistful moment of what fun it would be to do it, just once more—but in the delicate area of international relationships it was not so easy or advisable to do so. Of course the Communists could, that was their stock in trade—but the United States could not. It would, ironically enough, shock all those powers that watched the Soviet performances with a secret envy and approval. They would never accept it from America. It would be much too uncomfortable to have two great powers acting like great powers. As long as the United States confined itself to acid rejoinders and refused to take the offensive, everybody could pretend it wasn’t so.

  He swung again to the window and stared thoughtfully across at the UN buildings against the backdrop of the darkening river and Brooklyn, now becoming dotted with early evening lights as the day swiftly faded. On a sudden impulse he picked up a phone, had his secretary verify an appointment, clapped on his hat and coat, and hurried over.

  “You know, Seab,” the Majority Leader murmured as they sat side-by-side in the Senate and listened with half an ear to the foreign aid debate droning on, “you ought to take yourself a cruise when this is over. Get away from it all. Relax. Rejuvenate. Regain your youth.”

  His seatmate gave a chuckle and peered at him through half-closed eyes.

  “Now, Bob, you know exactly where I’m going to be doing my cruising this fall. You know exactly where, Bob. In the great state of South Carolina, Bob. That’s where.”

  “Things getting a little rough for you, are they?” Bob Munson asked. “I didn’t know that could ever happen to you, Seab.”

  The senior Senator from South Carolina chuckled.

  “Oh, yes, sir. Oh—yes—sir. Even to poor old beleaguered Seabright B. Cooley, servant of the people these fifty years, Bob. The little mice are nibblin’, Bob. They’re nibblin’ at me. But,” he said with a sudden emphasis, “I still know a thing or two, Bob. I’m not through yet. Or even near it.”

  “What are you going to do?” the Majority Leader asked with the impersonal curiosity of one political technician to another. “Get involved in the race issue?”

  “I’d rather not,” Seab Cooley said soberly, “if I can avoid it, Bob. It’s bad enough at best, and I don’t want to be stirring it around. Unless they push us too hard, Bob. If they push us too hard, Bob, then you’ll hear from me. Yes, sir, you’ll surely—hear—from—me.”

  “Mmm-hmm. I expect we will. Well, we’ll try to get you out of here tomorrow night, Seab. The Speaker and I wouldn’t want Harper Graham and those other boys to have a free hand against you one minute longer than we can help it.”

  “Where is he?” Senator Cooley said, hunching himself around and peering dourly over the Senate. “Where is that devious fellow, Bob?”

  “I don’t see your distinguished colleague,” the Majority Leader said. “Probably on the phone to South Carolina right this minute lining up votes against you, Seab.”

  “It won’t do him any good, Bob,” Senator Cooley said calmly. “It won’t do him any good at all.”

  “Well, I hope not,” Senator Munson said truthfully, “but you never know. Mr. President!” he said, jumping to his feet as Paul Hendershot of Indiana concluded a lengthy attack on the bill. Powell Hanson of North Dakota, in the chair, gave him recognition. “Mr. President, I should like to advise Senators that it is the leadership’s intention to hold the Senate in session late tonight, possibly until ten o’clock or midnight, in the hope that we can conclude action on the pending measure.”

  “Mr. President,” said Raymond Robert Smith of California, “I think we should have a quorum call so that a majority of the Senate can hear that important announcement by the Majority Leader. I so move a quorum call, Mr. President.”

  “Now, what is that all about?” Senator Munson muttered in some annoyance to Senator Cooley as he resumed his chair and looked about the Senate at the handful of Senators present. “We don’t need a quorum until at least eight o’clock. We won’t begin voting on anything until then.”

  “Maybe he has a delegation in town from California and wants the Senate to look busy for them,” the Senator from South Carolina suggested dryly. “Or maybe he wants to read us something for the Congressional Record. The old Record gets mighty important when you come to run for re-election, Bob. Maybe you noticed I’ve been using it a little myself recently.”

  “I had, Seab,” the Majority Leader said, “but I just thought you had come across something of unusual merit that should be recorded for posterity—and sent out under your frank to the voters, of course. Well, if Ray Smith has something, it probably concerns movies, agriculture, or irrigation. I expect we’ll have to listen.”

  What the junior Senator from California had, however, concerned neither movies, nor agriculture, nor irrigation, and in very short order it became apparent to his colleagues that it might behoove them to listen. He arose with a serious exp
ression as Powell Hanson announced that, fifty-four Senators having answered to their names, a quorum was present. Arly Richardson of Arkansas leaned over to Elizabeth Ames Adams of Kansas. “Oh-oh,” he said. “Ray’s The-Gravity-of-This-Cannot-Be-Minimized attitude. I wonder what up.” “Undue Japanese competition for Southern California industries,” Bessie Adams whispered wickedly back. “They’ve found a new process for mass-producing crackpots.”

  “Mr. President,” the Senator from California said earnestly, “I wish to call the Senate’s attention to a surprising and, I think, most disturbing development today in our relations with the great continent of Africa. I am informed, Mr. President, that the President of the United States has withdrawn plans to entertain one of the most distinguished representatives of the African continent, and, indeed, is leaving for Michigan to go fishing for five days and won’t even see him while he is in Washington. I refer, of course, to His Royal Highness the M’Bulu of Mbuele, certainly one of the most outstanding and noteworthy members of the great Negro race—”

  “I knew he was afraid of Cullee Hamilton running against him,” Cecil Hathaway of Delaware whispered to Murfee Andrews of Kentucky, “but I didn’t know he was that afraid.”

  “—and one who deserves, if anyone does, the recognition that should by rights be conferred upon him by the President.”

  “Mr. President,” Bob Munson said, “will the Senator yield? Is it not the fact that His Highness’ country is still under British rule and he is not yet the head of an independent state? Might this not explain the President’s action?”